Musings from Jim Sorenson and a few guest bloggers about Transformers, character models, science-fiction, comic books, and whatever else is on our minds.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Revenge of the Fallen - Tonight!

I'm heading out to see Revenge of the Fallen tonight with some folks from Cartoon Network! I'm pretty psyched about it, so I'm not going to try to post other new material on the blog until after I've seen it. Then I'll try to post some thoughts - probably not a review, since I imagine Bish has already covered that nicely.

Hope you all enjoy it! Many thanks to friend-of-the-blog Lonegamer for the tickets!

I had skipped Bish's review, so as not to be spoiled. You might want to skip my comments if you still don't wish to be spoiled.

SPOILERS

I agree with most of what he said. If I have a legitimate complaint, it's that the movie is longer than it needs to be. The plot, such as it is, is quite thin. That's not a problem in and of itself, but add in a 150 minute running time and one starts to wonder why. I think that last scene in the desert in particular went on longer than it needed to.

The good: robots got a lot more characterization in this movie. Optimus, Bumblebee and Frenzy got the time to shine in movie 1 - this movie lets Optimus, Bumblebee, Jetfire, the Twins, Wheelie, Megatron, Starscream and the Fallen all get in some good character moments. Megatron and Starscream, in particular, had a good dynamic going. I didn't always like the characterization, but at least they got some.

More good: Agent Simmons was completely unappealing to me in the first movie - Sector 7 seemed like a hugely wasted opportunity. Playing it for laughs instead of for menace was a bad choice in my view. That's why he worked so well here - he still had the occasional gag, but came across as serious and a credible ally.

Even more good: Alice. According to the adaptation, her alt mode was an animatronic doll from an Alice in Wonderland ride. This is the logical extrapolation of the long tradition of pretender technology, and she was suitably creepy once revealed.

The bad: the roommate and the Twins were just painful to watch whenever they were on screen.

More bad: the plot was very, very thin. I wasn't expecting much, and I didn't get it.

The ugly: too much lame humor. It seems like whenever there was a spare 10 seconds, someone said 'INSERT A FART JOKE HERE.'

Still, if you're a Transformers fan, you pretty much have to watch it. I don't think you'll regret it, but DO go to the bathroom right before it starts and don't bring a beverage.

I'm sad to agree with you, Jim, but I do. As a die-hard fan I felt kind of insulted. All the young kids behind me were laughing their asses off, while my brother and I covered our faces in shame. Too much lame humor, too thin a plot to work nicely... too many characters who don't do or say anything.

God, what a waste. My gf asked me what I thought of the movie and my answer was "I kept thinking WHAT HAVE THEY DONE WITH MY TOYS??"

The Twins were pitiful. Arcee and Sideswipe we good for nothing. Megatron was no longer the big bad and the Allspark was no longer the big deal.

And so on.

I really can't believe these are the same writers behind the new Star Trek movie. And I really can't believe it's so hard to make a good comic-book based movie. Iron Man, Sin City or the 2nd Hulk movie proved the contrary.

Carlos,I read an article somewhere that the writers originally wrote a draft but were forced to hurry things along due to the (then) impending writers' strike. What we saw on the screen was more Michael Bay than Kurtzman and Orci.Though the article itself could be wrong.